Felix ran to the village with his body energy exhausted as much as possible. He felt much better after having slept and figured he wasn't in any rush. The fort was the most developed he had seen, other than Tripeak-Valley, which reminded him to check the expense requests and approve them.

The fort lay on the top of a hill and was surrounded by a palisade of sharpened logs, or branches in this forest of gigantic trees. Felix lowered his hood and approached the entrance that was flanked by two guards wearing animal skins that hid any armor they might be wearing underneath. They also each held a sword and shield.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 24)

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 23)

"Halt. State your purpose."

"I'm just vi-"

Would they let me in if they thought I was just visiting?

"I'm thinking of moving towns. I want to be strong so Icewatch obviously caught my eye." Felix declared with a slightly gruff voice.

"Excellent choice. You will need to go on a hunt with Broxus to see if you can keep up. If he likes what he sees, you're in. Luckily, he should be heading out for his hunt today in a half hour or so."

The guard pointed in the town at the biggest wooden building in the entire place that resembled a longhouse, "Head over to that building and tell anyone you meet that you are hunting with Broxus today."

Felix nodded, then saluted to the guard and walked towards the building he had pointed out. One of the guards saluted him back, the other hit himself on the head with his shield trying to salute.

I don't know why, but I just felt like saluting was right. That was great though, I'll have to do that more often when someone has something in their hand.

Felix walked into the longhouse and found the inside consisted of multiple long tables running parallel with the building. There were benches along the sides of the tables and people sitting around them randomly. They seemed to be mostly eating large dishes of meat.

Felix asked a random person where Broxus was and they just jerked their head towards the end of the longhouse. Looking in that direction, Felix almost smacked himself.

Of course he's at the royal table looking over his subjects.

Felix walked over to the table at the end of the longhouse running in the opposite direction to all the others, with everyone who currently sat there on one side facing the rest of the room. In the center of the table, in the biggest chair, was a large man almost seven feet tall with thick brown hair covering his head and face. He wore metal armor visible on his shoulders, with the rest hidden by the hide of some animal. Leaning against his side was a large great-axe.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 28)

Next to him was a thin blonde man, taller than average, wearing animal hide as armor with a bow slung over his shoulder.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 27)

On the opposite side was a buff woman with black hair wearing metal armor, hides, with a huge tower shield on her back.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 26)

Lastly, next to the woman on the far end of the table, was a short man with short light brown hair and trim beard wearing a large animal hide like a coat with a staff at his side.

[E - Common] Human (Lvl 25)

The man in the middle, with the battle axe, the highest level and who Felix assumed was Broxus finished his drumstick before looking up at Felix, "Have you come to join Icewatch?"

"Potentially. I was told I need to go on a hunt with you."

"Yes, we must see if you are worthy of joining us. Pull up a seat."

Felix carried a chair over from the side of the room and placed it across from Broxus. He pulled out some Parroukan and began eating.

"So Newcomer, Icewatch only accepts people who raise the bar. We want people that are strong and will continue to work on getting stronger. It keeps everyone motivated. We hunt about 25 creatures a day, so you are going to have to keep up. On a good day we may even take on 30, it depends on how quickly we can find them. You are probably going to want to wear something warmer than that. We can lend you some hides if you need them."

"No thanks, I'm perfectly comfortable. Should be able to keep up, but let me know if you feel like I'm holding you back."

"Oh I will. If you start freezing out there, we are leaving you behind. What class are you? Need to figure out how to adapt."

"Caster."

"Alright, should be fine. You focus on damage, right?"

"Yup."

"Ok, talk to Lucas over there, the one with the staff. Lucas, are you done eating?"

Lucas stood up, grabbed his staff and walked around the table, "Come on, we can figure out how to best fit you into the hunting party while Broxus finishes eating."

"When I'm done, we'll find you at the gate."

Felix followed Lucas outside and towards the gate to the fort. They left through the gate and stopped just outside of it.

"Alright, so I'm also a caster, but I'm focused on healing right now. I'm gonna use Mana Bolt and fire at some trees, I want you to do the same thing I do after me."

Lucas turned around and started firing Mana Bolts at the tree in front of him. He raised his staff and fired one Mana Bolt about every four or five seconds. His other hand made a twirl in the air and he uttered some incomprehensible gibberish every time he cast. The Mana Bolt was mostly accurate in that it hit the tree but veered off just slightly in a random direction every time. He kept firing for a few minutes.

Considering how ginormous the tree was, Felix was appalled by the display. He felt the spell being cast and every time, it formed very slowly, and almost robotically. The mana also seemed to stall for a while doing almost nothing before forming right near the end.

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Is that the fastest he can fire? Those are bog standard Mana Bolts too. How do you kill anything? You can't even hit very accurately, I guess if you focus on healing…

Lucas finished and turned to Felix, "I'm pretty high level and I practice every day, so don't feel bad if yours aren't as fast or accurate as mine. I do need to judge where you're at though. I have one healing spell that I use mostly right now, but I still do a lot of damage and I only got it recently. So I was focused fully on DPS before that."

Oh god. Can you not see that I'm a higher level than you? What do you mean you are ‘pretty high level'.

Felix walked forwards to about where Lucas had stood. He faced the same tree and Lucas stood off to the side of Felix. Felix was tempted to completely blow Lucas' display out of the water but decided it was probably better if he looked somewhat normal, at least what this guy would think of as normal. He was about to cast something then realized it was probably not normal to cast without a weapon.

I don't have a wand or anything, I can't ask to borrow his. Oh shit, are there any sticks nearby? No. What's in my inventory… the rapier will have to do.

Felix pulled out the Glass Edge Rapier from his inventory and a brilliant silver rapier with a simple cross-guard and a translucent edge appeared in his hand pointed toward the tree. He wanted it to look like a magic item so he cast a tiny Light spell right at the tip of the rapier at the same time as he cast a slightly larger Mana Bolt. The Light spell refracted through the glass edge which, admittedly looked like a really cool cosmetic effect.

He fired the bolt at the tree and silently counted to cast the next one. He dimmed the Light spell slightly and waited three seconds, before brightening it and casting another Mana Bolt. He aimed this one slightly off to the side this time so he didn't seem too accurate, but still more accurate than Lucas. He continued this for a few minutes before Lucas stopped him.

"Wow, you are really good. That rapier is super cool it must do some crazy things. You cast really fast, and your Mana Bolts look like they do more damage. Also you didn't even use verbal or somatic components. Do you have some kind of spell casting speed skill and damage skill? They must be at least Rare."

"Uh, something like that."

"It's cool, you can show me when you get more comfortable with the village. Here, I'll show you mine, just tell me if you have a different skill or the same one but better."

"Uh, sure."

[E - Uncommon] Speed Casting

All the spells in your spell list cast 10% faster.

This explains a lot. I was wondering why I didn't get offered more skills but at this point I can assume it's cause I have nothing in my spell list. Also his weird casting where nothing happens for like 4 seconds then it almost instantly casts, is this how spell list spells work? I bet The System is shaping the mana and casting the spell on behalf of the person, they just choose the spell. I wonder why more people don't just do it the way I do, it's not that hard. Just took a little practice.

"Uh, same thing but my rapier also gives me casting speed boost."

"Woah, that's awesome, how do I get an item like that?"

"It's from one of the Quest Dungeons."

"Oh we have one of those up north east from here. I haven't had time to run it yet, Broxus wants us to hit level 50 first in case the gear is better, then he wants to try for a world boss. He figures we need more people but he thinks the 100 strongest in the fort can take it. I'm pretty sure we are gonna need at least 300 to even stand a chance. Have you seen one? There's this yeti to the south, that thing is huuuuge I don't know how we are even supposed to fight that thing at all, and it's level is so high."

Fear.

Woah that was not what I was expecting from the earrings.

Lucas' eyes went wide suddenly, "Oh shit, almost forgot. For the hunting, we have Sophia who tanks em, Broxus goes in from the side, we hit it with James from the other side. Try not to hit Sophia or get in Broxus' way and we should be fine. If you get hit, I'll try to heal you up, so stay close."

"Sure thing."

"Alright, Broxus should be here soon."

As if on cue, Broxus walked out of the gate with Sophia and James in tow.

"Ready to go?"

"Yes sir." Lucas responded.

"So, how's he look?" Broxus asked Lucas clearly intending Felix to overhear.

"He casts faster with bigger hits than me."

Awe.

Huh, I'm not even directly talking to him.

Broxus looked at Lucas incredulously, "Good"

Disbelief. Impressed. Slight incredulity.

Maybe I should turn that down somehow, if I can.

It took almost fifteen minutes for Broxus to find a large moose.

[E - Common] Moose (Lvl 30)

Felix expected them to sneak up on the moose but instead Broxus ran at it full speed and his party struggled to catch up with him. The moose noticed the large man running at it aggressively flanked by three other humans but instead of running away as Felix expected, the moose turned towards Broxus and charged at him.

Felix caught up with Lucas effortlessly and stood near him waiting. Sophia was still running into the moose's path and Broxus was preparing to… do something as the moose had almost reached him.

Instead of allowing the moose to gore Broxus, he dove to the side and rolled away revealing Sophia behind him who held her shield in front of her prepared to take the strike.

Why would you even try to tank the strike? Just let it run into a tree, or into nothing. It's unnecessary, isn't it?

The moose lowered it's head and collided with Sophia's tower shield then swung it's head upwards, trying to throw her. It succeeded and she flew back a few meters but rolled to break her fall in the snow. As soon as she was thrown, Broxus started running back towards the moose but stopped once he was within a few meters.

Lucas and James both prepared shots, the former fired a Mana Bolt and the latter an arrow. Felix quickly cast a slightly larger Mana Bolt at the tip of his rapier with a bright Light spell, to not be left out. His Mana Bolt fired and hit the moose in the neck a full second before Jame's arrow hit it in the thigh and two seconds before Lucas' Mana Bolt grazed it's belly.

The moose turned around to look for a new target so Broxus yelled to get it's attention. Sophia got to her feet as quickly as she could and charged at it from the other direction. Broxus was running in circles to keep the moose away and Sophia ran at it. Felix looked at James and Lucas who were readying their next projectile but holding them waiting.

Sophia got into range of the moose and seemed to use some sort of taunt because it immediately turned towards her and started running. As soon as it did, Broxus followed. The moose reached Sophia and rose to it's hind legs to try and trample her. Broxus swung with his axe, James loosed an arrow and Lucas was a few seconds into his next Mana Bolt cast. Felix quickly fired off another Mana Bolt, but made sure to hit it in the belly instead of the neck.

Holy shit. They all wait for Sophia to make an opening by tanking a strike then hope they hit something. Broxus takes something like three whole seconds to swing the stupid axe and even then it doesn't seem to be doing that much. It's definitely doing more than Lucas or James are though. Lucas barely hits it and James is accurate, but the arrows barely sink into it's flesh.

This pattern continued for just over four minutes until the moose was finally taken down.

"Not bad kid, you are gonna have to step it up though. I wanna really see what you can do."

Impressed. Lying.

On second thought, maybe I won't turn it down. It's nice having affirmations.

"I'll try my best."

"Alright let me let you in on a you a pro-tip, you want your profession to be something easy to level and related to the things you hunt. For me, it's skinning, for Lucas it's cooking, for James it's butchering. Lastly, Sophia tans the hides. It makes it so we can keep up with our professions as we hunt. Everyday we hunt, then level our professions. That's how you stay ahead of the curve."

They really can't see my level, can they?

Broxus stowed the corpse in his inventory, "Sophia, status."

"85%" She responded instantly, definitely expecting the question.

"Not bad, we can probably do another two then have Lucas heal you up, sound good?"

She simply nodded in return.

Broxus started walking away but turned his head over his shoulder to look back at Felix, "As you can see, we move pretty quickly so try not to feel overwhelmed, but don't worry too much, that last one was about the average level we usually fight. They rarely get more than 5 levels above me, if they do, we might just leave it be depending on when we find it in the hunt. Those guys can be rewarding but the battle is tough."

Felix suppressed a groan and a look of fear and disgust.

You fight 25 of these things, it took you five minutes to kill it with my help, it takes almost fifteen minutes to find them. All in all, you can take one out every twenty minutes on average. In eight hours, assuming you hunt for eight hours, level your profession for eight then sleep for eight, you can take out 24. I guess that adds up. She took 15% of her health fighting that thing then you need to heal. So really, it should only be 25 on the best of days. Still, average level 30, 25 a day, you should be a much higher level, right?

Felix continued to follow them around for another three hunts before they stopped to heal Sophia. They encountered one more moose and a white wolf. The white wolf wasn't as strong or durable as the moose, but was faster, so James, Broxus and Lucas hit it less often. It took even longer to kill. . . . . .